10 Worst Movies Of 2021

With Disney now industriously rehashing most of their successful IP, it was just a matter of time before they dug up the Home Alone franchise for another go-around, but could they really not do any better than this?

The marketing for Home Sweet Home Alone suggested it was another low-effort straight-to-streaming reboot that exists solely to keep the series' brand awareness alive, but the end result is so, so much worse than that.

Not content to be a charmlessly mediocre reimagining nobody asked for, Home Sweet Home Alone commits the unforgivable sin of actually trying to do something different with the original setup and failing spectacularly.

The primary difference to the Macaulay Culkin-starring original is that the "thieves" in this version are actually entirely sympathetic - Jeff and Pam (Rob Delaney and Ellie Kemper) are a down-on-their-luck couple who quite plausibly believe that young Max (Archie Yates) stole a rare doll which could solve all their financial issues.

And so, watching them get viciously beaten in the film's third act trap-filled funhouse isn't enjoyable at all - it feels cruel and mean-spirited given that they're hardly the greedy, cartoonish baddies that the Wet Bandits were in the original film.

The original Home Alone had such a perfect formula that the smarter decision would've been to just straight-up remake it, rather than deviate from the template and deliver something infinitely worse than a mere unimaginative retread.